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the city in Syria

Raqqa (ٱلرَّقَّة, also Rakka) is a city in Syria on the left bank of the Euphrates River, about east of Aleppo. It is located east of the Tabqa Dam, Syria's largest dam. The Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine city and bishopric Callinicum (formerly a Latin and now a Maronite Catholic titular see) was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate between 796 and 809, under the reign of Harun al Rashid. It was also the capital of the Islamic State from 2014 to 2017. With a population of 531,952 based on the 2021 official census, Raqqa is the sixth largest city in Syria. During the Syrian Civil War, the city was captured in 2013 by the Syrian opposition and then by the Islamic State. ISIS made the city its capital in 2014. attributes its founding to Alexander the Great, citing the advantageous location as the rationale behind its establishment. Similarly, Isidore of Charax, in the Parthian Stations, also credits its foundation to Alexander. Conversely, Appian includes Nikephorion in a list of settlements he attributes to Seleucid King Seleucus I Nicator (reigned 301–281 BC). Nikephorion, alongside other cities like Anthemousias, was established by Macedonians and bore a Greek name.

In the year 639 or 640, the city fell to the Muslim conqueror Iyad ibn Ghanm. Since then, it has been known by the Arabic name al Raqqah, or "the morass", after its marshy surroundings at the time. ), and it had at least four monasteries, of which the Saint Zaccheus Monastery remained the most prominent one. The city's Jewish community also survived until at least the 12th century, when the traveller Benjamin of Tudela visited it and attended its synagogue. At least during the Umayyad period, the city was also home to a small Sabian pagan community. Ibn Ghanm's successor as governor of Raqqa and the Jazira, Sa'id ibn Amir ibn Hidhyam, built the city's first mosque. The building was later enlarged to monumental proportions, measuring some , with a square brick minaret added later, possibly in the mid 10th century. The mosque survived until the early 20th century, being described by the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld in 1907, but has since vanished. Many companions of Muhammad lived in Raqqa. In 656, during the First Fitna, the Battle of Siffin, the decisive clash between Ali and the Umayyad Mu'awiya took place about west of Raqqa. The tombs of several of Ali's followers (such as Ammar ibn Yasir and Uwais al Qarani) are in Raqqa and have become sites of pilgrimage. The city also contained a column with Ali's autograph, but it was removed in the 12th century and taken to Aleppo's Ghawth Mosque. The Islamic conquest of the region did not disrupt the existing trade routes too much, and new Byzantine coins continued to make their way into Raqqa until about 655 8. The Byzantine government may have seen the area as just temporarily in rebellion. Approximately west of Raqqa lay the unfinished victory monument Heraqla from the time of Harun al Rashid. It is said to commemorate the conquest of the Byzantine city of Herakleia in Asia Minor in 806. Other theories connect it with cosmological events. The monument is preserved in a substructure of a square building in the centre of a circular walled enclosure, in diameter. However, the upper part was never finished because of the sudden death of Harun al Rashid in Greater Khorasan. Harun al Rashid also invested in the water supply in Raqqa. The writer Ibn al Sam'ani also recorded this shift over a century later. Archaeologists have not found evidence of this port, but it may have been south of al Muhtariqa on the bank of the Euphrates because this would have been a convenient location close to the city's main commercial center. Between 1800 and 1803, the province was governed by the famous Milli Timur Paşa of the Kurdish Milli tribe. From the 1820s, Raqqa was a place of wintering for the semi nomadic Arab 'Afadla tribal confederation and was little more than its extensive archeological remains. It was the establishment in 1864 by the Ottomans of the Karakul Janissary garrison, in the south east corner of the Abbasid enclosure, that led to the revival of the modern city of Raqqa. The first families that settled in Raqqa were nicknamed ''The Ghul'' by the surrounding Arab semi nomadic tribes from whom they bought the right to settle within the Abbasid enclosure, near the Janissary garrison. They used the ancient bricks of the enclosure to build the first buildings of modern Raqqa. They came under the protection of the surrounding Arab semi nomadic tribes because they feared attacks from other neighboring tribes on their herds. They claimed the area west of the Ottoman garrison.

In the early 20th century, two waves of Cherkess refugees from the Caucasian War were granted lands west of the Abbasid enclosure by the Ottomans. Raqqa was the first provincial capital to fall to the Syrian rebels. The Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front set up a sharia court at the sports centre and in early June 2013, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant said that it was open to receive complaints at its Raqqa headquarters.

Migration from Aleppo, Homs, Idlib and other inhabited places to the city occurred as a result of the ongoing civil war in the country, and Raqqa was known as the hotel of the revolution by some because of the number of people who moved there.

ISIL took complete control of Raqqa by 13 January 2014. ISIL proceeded to execute Alawites and suspected supporters of Bashar al Assad in the city and destroyed the city's Shia mosques and Christian churches such as the Armenian Catholic Church of the Martyrs, which was then converted into an ISIL police headquarters and an Islamic centre, tasked to recruit new fighters. The Christian population of Raqqa, which had been estimated to be as much as 10% of the total population before the civil war began, largely fled the city. On 15 November 2015, France, in response to attacks in Paris two days earlier, dropped about 20 bombs on multiple ISIL targets in Raqqa. Pro government sources said that an anti IS uprising took place between 5 and 7 March 2016. On 26 October 2016, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said that an offensive to take Raqqa from IS would begin within weeks. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by the US, launched the Second Battle of Raqqa on 6 June 2017 and declared victory in the city on 17 October 2017. Bombardment by the US led coalition led to the destruction of most of the city, including civilian infrastructure. Some 270,000 people were said to have fled Raqqa.

At the end of October 2017, the government of Syria issued a statement that said: "Syria considers the claims of the United States and its so called alliance about the liberation of Raqqa city from ISIS to be lies aiming to divert international public opinion from the crimes committed by this alliance in Raqqa province more than 90% of Raqqa city has been leveled due to the deliberate and barbaric bombardment of the city and the towns near it by the alliance, which also destroyed all services and infrastructures and forced tens of thousands of locals to leave the city and become refugees. Syria still considers Raqqa to be an occupied city, and it can only be considered liberated when the Syrian Arab Army enters it".

By June 2019, 300,000 residents had returned to the city, including 90,000 IDPs, and many shops in the city had reopened. Through the efforts of the Global Coalition and the Raqqa Civil Council, several public hospitals and schools have been reopened, public buildings like the stadium, the Raqqa Museum, mosques and parks have been restored, anti extremism educational centers for youth have been established and the rebuilding and restoration of roads, roundabouts and bridges, installation of solar powered street lighting, water restoration, demining, re institution of public transportation and rubble removal has taken place. However, the Global Coalition's funding of the stabilization of the region has been limited, and the Coalition has stated that any large scale aid will be halted until a peace agreement for the future of Syria through the Geneva process has been reached. Rebuilding of residential houses and commercial buildings has been placed solely in the hands of civilians, there is a continued presence of rubble, unreliable electricity and water access in some areas, schools still lacking basic services and the presence of ISIL sleeper cells and IEDs. Some sporadic protests against the SDF have taken place in the city in the summer of 2018. On 7 February 2019, the SDF media center announced the capture of 63 ISIL operatives in the city. According to the SDF, the operatives were a part of a sleeper cell and were all arrested within a 24 hour time span, ending the day long curfew that was imposed on the city the day before. In mid February 2019, a mass grave holding an estimated 3,500 bodies was discovered below a plot of farmland in the Al Fukheikha agricultural suburb. It was the largest mass grave discovered post ISIL rule thus far. The bodies were reported to be the victims of executions when ISIL ruled the city. In 2019 a project called the "Shelter Project" was launched by international organisations in coordination with the Raqqa Civil Council, providing funding to residents of partially destroyed buildings in order to aid with their reconstruction. In April 2019 the rehabilitation of the Old Raqqa Bridge over the Euphrates was finished. The bridge was originally built by British forces during World War II in 1942. The National Hospital in Raqqa was reopened after rehabilitation work in May 2019. As a consequence of the 2019 Turkish offensive into north eastern Syria, the SDF called on the Syrian Arab Army to enter the areas under its rule, including in the area of Raqqa as part of a deal to prevent Turkish troops from capturing any more territory in northern Syria.

The Raqqa Museum had numerous clay tablets with cuneiform writing and many other objects vanishing in the fog of war. A particular set of those tablets were excavated by archaeologists from Leiden at the Tell Sabi Abyad. The excavation team cast silicone rubber moulds of the tablets before the war to create cast copies for subsequent studies in the Netherlands. As the original tablets were looted, those moulds became the only evidence of parts of the 12th century BC in Northern Syria. Having a lifespan of roughly thirty years, the moulds proved not be a durable solution, hence the need for digitization to counter the loss of the originals. Therefore the Scanning for Syria (SfS) project and Theodosius rescinded his decree. Bishop Damianus of Callinicum took part in the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and in 458 was a signatory of the letter that the bishops of the province wrote to Emperor Leo I the Thracian after the death of Proterius of Alexandria. In 518 Paulus was deposed for having joined the anti Chalcedonian Severus of Antioch. Callinicum had a Bishop Ioannes in the mid 6th century. In the same century, a Notitia Episcopatuum lists the diocese as a suffragan of Edessa, the capital and metropolitan see of Osrhoene.

No longer a residential bishopric, Callinicum has been listed by the Catholic Church twice as a titular see, as suffragan of the Metropolitan of the Late Roman province of Osroene : first as Latin (meanwhile suppressed) and currently as Maronite titular bishopric.

Raqqa has never been home to a sizeable Shi'i community. Uways al Qarani is an important religious figure in Raqqa, and could be called the city's "patron saint". In response, ISIL has killed members of the group. A film about the city made by RBSS was released internationally in 2017, premiering and winning an award at that year's Sundance Film Festival. In January 2016, a pseudonymous French author named Sophie Kasiki published a book about her move from Paris to the besieged city in 2015, where she was lured to perform hospital work, and her subsequent escape from ISIL.

Prior to the Syrian Civil War the city was served by Chemins de Fer Syriens.